


Shadows in Puddles

by EtoileGarden



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Bad Dreams, Fluff, Late Night Chats, M/M, Nightmares, Pre-Relationship, St Agnes, The Raven Cycle - Freeform, pynch - Freeform, trc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-16
Updated: 2017-09-16
Packaged: 2018-12-30 08:12:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12104469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EtoileGarden/pseuds/EtoileGarden
Summary: Late night conversations at St Agnes





	Shadows in Puddles

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first ever TRC fic, I read the series in its entirety last month and couldn't stay away

It’s the rain that woke him, he realised belatedly. He’d jerked himself out of sleep several long minutes ago, breathing as ragged as if he’d been racing, and had immediately hunched up under his blankets, arms around his knees, forehead on his arms, mind a messy muddle of confusion. It had taken him this long to even out his breath, to soothe the impulsive panic in his chest. 

Repairs were being done all along the church building walls, and the church itself, and the side of his apartment was coated in scaffolding like a chrysalis. In a few weeks, all the metal and tarp would be peeled away to reveal the prettier, more whole structure. However, for now, the rain was thundering down right outside his window, painfully loud and jarring on the thin metal and taut tarp. 

For a few long drawn breaths, he could tell himself that the racket of the rain was what had woken him, that he hadn’t forgotten where he was, or who he was. He could almost convince his mind of it, but there was nothing he could do to ease out the hollow in his chest. 

The hollow noise of rain echoed inside his small apartment with such intensity he could easily believe it was falling on a tin trailer roof just above his head. He had easily believed it. He had believed it so vividly it had pulled him right out of his hard worked for sleep and tried to convince him that he’d spiraled back into his past. 

Uncurling from around himself, uncomfortably aware of the sweat prickling his back, the salt slipping down his cheeks, he forced himself to stare through the dark of the room. He could see his desk, shabby and covered in paper and books and some of Ronan’s shit. He could see his school bag, his uniform hanging on a hook by the door, the door, locked and bolted. 

Grounding himself further he focused on the feeling of the rough blanket crumpled in his fingers, the lumps of the mattress under his legs, the rain damp air cold on the back of his neck, coming in through the barely open window. 

St Agnes, he told himself, home, he told himself, safe, he told himself, alone, he told himself. 

“Parrish,” Ronan said, negating his aloneness in a timely and unhelpful manner. 

He thought he was going to have a heart attack. 

“Fuck-” he bit out once his innards hadn’t imploded from the shock, “Lynch. I forgot you were here,” he said, half in explanation, half in frustration.

“You usually leave staring into the night with a sick expression on your face for nights I’m not here, then?” Ronan asked easily, darkly amused by Adam’s surprise.

He would throw his pillow at him, but then he wouldn’t have a pillow, so he settled for dropping himself back down against it and exhaling loudly.   
“Fuck off,” he replied eloquently, and could almost hear the responding smirk.   
He did hear Ronan shifting, the floorboards creaking under him as he pushed himself up, first on his elbow and then to sit upright to look at Adam. 

“Rain wake you?” he asked and Adam rolled his eyes. 

“You’re not usually this chatty right after you’ve woken up,” he replied, and Ronan shrugged. 

“I’ve not slept yet.”

Which means that he watched the entire debacle of Adam lunging upright in the dark like a man possessed.

“Well go the fuck to sleep now, then!” he snapped, rolling on his side, away from the conversation. 

“You’re upset,” Ronan observed with a surprising amount of tact, and then erased the tact by leaning over and poking Adam hard in the shoulder, “bad dream?” 

“No,” he mumbled truthfully. The bad dream bit had only kicked in once he’d woken up. “It was the rain that woke me,” he tacked on, like a lure to shut Ronan up. 

“I mean,” Ronan’s voice was smooth and languid in the dark, “I know rain’s scary and all, but I thought with all our recent adventures you’d be a bit braver.” 

“Fuck off,” Adam reiterated and this time Ronan laughed. His amusement was short lived, however, followed almost immediately by a long sigh, and then he moved forwards to lean across onto Adam’s mattress, and pillowed his head on his arms. 

“On the scaffolding it sounds like my nightmares,” he said, voice suddenly thick with sincerity, “can you hear it too?” 

They’re silent then, listening to the fuzz of the noise outside, interspersed with the steady louder drip of water from tarp to metal, tik, tik, tik - 

“Is that why you’re not sleeping?” Adam asked, rolling over again to face Ronan, watched as he shrugged lazily, then nodded once. 

“Oh,” Adam said, and then, “that’s not what woke me.” 

“So?” Ronan asks into his arms, “What did then?”

Apparently it was a night for honesty. He reached out absently to tuck his fingers around the leather on Ronan’s wrist, rubbed it between his fingertips. He could feel tooth marks under his fingers, knows without a doubt that he’s borrowing Ronan’s nervous tic. At least, he supposed, he wasn’t chewing on them as well. 

“I thought I was home again,” he says eventually, clumsily, “not home. At the trailer. It sounds like it right now.” 

Ronan, to his credit, doesn’t ask for more explanation.   
“Oh,” he echoes, and then, “you ok?” 

Adam snorts, lets go of the leather bands and rolls onto his back to stare up at the ceiling.

“Are you?” he retorts and Ronan lets out a disgruntled noise, like air from a tire, and reaches out to nudge Adam’s shoulder. Not hard, a press of knuckles to soft fabric. Doesn’t withdraw. 

“I’m fine,” Adam says slowly, “I know I’m out of there.” 

Ronan doesn’t reply, just unfolds his fist against Adam’s shoulder until his fingers are hooked round his upper arm, waits in the silence. 

“I just forget, sometimes,” Adam adds, “I’m fine, Ronan.” 

“Ok,” he tightens his grip on Adam’s arm, “wanna go for a drive?” 

“It’s like -” Adam lifts his arm, squints at his darkened watch face, “-3 am, and it’s like ass out there right now.” 

“Yeah,” Ronan said, “wanna go for a drive?”

Adam considers the sound of the rain, the fact that he knows what it is, knows where he is, his heartbeat which continues to stutter into disarray despite this knowledge. Considers the fact that Ronan can’t sleep, can’t relax with the noise surrounding them, the fact that Ronan is still here. 

“Yeah,” he says.


End file.
